Eight. Minutes.

Calling Tech Support

Our Satellite went out a few weeks ago. I don’t watch regular tv during the day so I kept forgetting to call. Here lately, I only watch regular tv when I go to bed. And by then I am not calling about it. Yesterday I finally remembered during reasonable hours. 

I called Dish Network Tech Support so basically I called India. A very nice man named Bert answered the phone. 

His real name was not Bert.  I find it slightly sad that when a company outsources all of their calls to a foreign country, the actual residents of that country that work there have to Americanize their names.  His real name is no doubt something Indian with great meaning, yet to appease the pompous Americans, his name is Bert. 

So I gave Bert my account information and I tried to explain the problem.  The box works just fine. We can still view everything on DVR but we kept getting the “Searching for Signal” screen (Error Code 015, if you were wondering) which said to me, the dish itself was faulty.  I explained this to Bert.  He asked me a few questions and I answered them as best as I could. 

Five minutes pass with mundane questions such as: What is the weather like outside? Is it Sunny? Is it hotter than normal? etc.  Basically, Bert wanted to know if it was raining.  It was not. What saddens me as well is that Bert deals with these pompous Americans all day long and I have no doubt that some people call during a thunderstorm because their signal is lost making this Bert’s first question.  I bet at that call center in India, they could play a drinking game. Everyone take a shot when someone calls because of a lost signal due to the rain. It interrupted their American Idol watching, dammit!  FIX IT!  

After I answered all the easy questions to weed out the really stupid people who usually call, I interrupted Bert:

“Bert, you are a super nice guy and I hate to waste your time. But I have checked all of these things already and I think you are going to have to send someone out here. Can you just send someone, please?” 

Bert said he would like to do that but he has to ask these questions before they send a technician. 

23 minutes later...

Bert: “Stacey, we are going to have send a technician.”

You don’t say?

Twenty eight minutes of questions. During this time I turned it off, turned it back on. Unplugged it, plugged it back in. Check the set up about 4 times after making minor adjustments that didn’t do anything. Made sure the cables were properly attached to the box and the wall, etc. All of the things I did about 2 weeks ago. But I humored Bert and did what he asked. As I said, he was a nice guy. 

Bert told me a technician would be there between 8:00 and 12:00 today.  He also told me that we have a warranty (we do?) and we wouldn’t get billed. He congratulated me on having the warranty and then reiterated, “That means you will not be charged.” Thanks, Bert!

So I get up early this morning, around 8:45.  I could have slept much longer but I figured with my luck I would be asleep and then they would be here. Stella would go nuts at the door and I would still be half asleep when I answered the door.  Also, every Dish Network guy that has been out to our home have both been pretty cute...I’m just sayin.

So I get up and go about my morning routine just waiting for the doorbell to ring so we can get this fixed and I can go on about my day. My morning routine is as follows:

Pee (of course)

Brush my teeth

Make the bed

Grab a Perrier out the fridge

Fix a regular water in my Memphis Tervis Tumbler

Turn on the fan in the living room and turn the air down to 70 ensuring that I am freezing

Get a blanket and sit in the red oversized chair and read.  

I usually read for at least 2 hours every morning. Sometimes 4. It just depends. You know that point when you are reading and you are sitting there and you are like “Okay, I think I am done.” I just wait until that happens. 

So I go about my routine, still expecting to be interrupted. 

Dude gets here at 12:15.  Of course he does. I could have slept so much longer. He leaves at 12:23.  Eight minutes. It took him eight minutes to fix the problem.  He had to replace some splitter thing that had gone bad. 

And this guy wasn’t cute. Bummer.